More than $390 million in road construction projects on state highways will be underway this year in the metro Denver area, with more than a third of the total funded by the federal stimulus program.

A divided RTD board committee has given preliminary approval to removing a set of planned moving walkways from the design of the FasTracks transfer facility at Denver Union Station,a controversial element that has divided transit advocates and helped spawn a lawsuit.

Simulation shows a typical streetcar running on Colfax Avenue at Columbine Street.

RTD and other agencies that are planning transit projects will have to wait for new rules to be drafted to see if the Obama Administration’s decision last week removing Bush Administration restrictions on funding transit will bring more money into FasTracks corridors or projects like the proposed Colfax Streetcar.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said last week that making transit grant funding decisions based solely on bottom-line mathematical calculations of, essentially, cost over travel-time savings failed to take into account whether projects improved a community’s livability.

As a result, the DOT will draft new regulations for its New Starts and Small Starts grant programs for transit corridors to allow consideration of such things as lowering carbon emissions, promoting economic development and relieve congestion.

RTD says it’s way too early to know the impact any changes might have on FasTracks corridors that didn’t meet the old threshold for funding.

Roadgeeks like to name things.

Today we’re going to try to hang a name on something.

I’m proposing that we give a household name to the interchange in the Denver Tech Center where Interstate 225 dumps into Interstate 25. I say we call it the Full House. That’s the name that fellow roadgeek Duncan Shaw, a news producer at CBS4 Denver, proposed for it in 2001.

Read more to see why…

RTD intends to reinstate the G Line light rail, its only suburb-to-suburb rapid transit service, after it builds a 2.3-mile extension to the Southeast Corridor tracks into Lone Tree as part of the FasTracks program.

The line, which was eliminated earlier this year due to low ridership, would merit resumed service because in conjunction with the light rail extension up the Interstate 225 Corridor through Aurora, it would link the growing Fitzsimons medical campus on Colfax Avenue with the growing Douglas County area around Lone Tree and the RidgeGate area, including Sky Ridge Medical Center.

In between it would make stops at Aurora City Center, Parker Road, the Denver Tech Center, Park Meadows and the entire southeast business corridor. The operating plan is outlined in an environmental evaluation of the estimated $184.3 million Southeast Corridor Extension.

Contractor crews led by Railroad Specialties of Littleton do track welding as part of the expansion of the Elati light rail maintenance facility and train yard, a part of FasTracks.

RTD has spent or committed $1.17 billion so far on FasTracks, one-sixth of the total estimated cost through 2017 of its rapid-transit expansion program.

The commitment level represents items already paid for plus current work now under contract – 17 percent of the total $6.9 billion projected cost.

Funds have been committed to all 10 rapid transit rail and bus corridors plus assorted common elements such as conversion of Denver Union Station into FasTracks’ main hub, expansion of the light rail maintenance facility in Englewood and planning for a new maintenance facility for heavy-rail commuter train cars.

A significant portion of the commitments have been made to corridors facing cutbacks if no new revenues are found to complete them.

Iliff Station site plan on the east side of I-225.

RTD plans to jump start its FasTracks program by breaking out a segment of the I-225 light rail corridor up to Iliff Avenue for early construction starting late next year if metro voters approve a second sales-tax increase to complete FasTracks.

Later this month, the RTD board will consider a $3.5 million contract award to Michael Baker Jr. Inc. to do final design on the initial 1.4-mile segment to Iliff Avenue. The construction of tracks northward from the existing Southeast Corridor end-of-line at Nine Mile Station – at Interstate 225 and Parker Road – to the first new station at Iliff Avenue would bring faster relief to parking problems at the jammed Nine Mile park-n-Ride garage, said RTD’s project manager Larry Warner.

Since the 2006 opening day of the Southeast Corridor light rail, built as part of T-REX, the 1,225 spaces at Nine Mile typically fill up by 7 a.m.

“We’re looking to get that leg open as soon as possible,” Warner said. “We’re looking at providing an early opening of that segment because of our parking problems at Nine Mile.”

So was T-REX really under budget?

When RTD closed out the books last week on its half of the T-REX multimodal expansion along Interstates 25 and 225, it finished with $3.7 million left over out of its $879 million share of the $1.67 billion budget it split with the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Skeptics cry foul. They point out that the Major Investment Study on the Southeast Corridor, completed in 1997, said the light rail project would cost $445 million. They want you to think RTD went double over its budget.

The skeptics are either uninformed or deliberately misleading you. They are feeding you an apple and claiming it’s an orange.

RTD closed out the books on its part of the T-REX project with $3.7 million leftover out of the final budget of $939.4 million. The final close-out of the project had the funds left over even after RTD spent some of the surplus on extra items after the project opened, including access to Park Meadows mall, three pedestrian bridges, and upgrades and art at stations. Under federal rules, the $3.7 million must remain in the southeast corridor that T-REX built. RTD says it will use it to upgrade electrical power substations along the route to meet power demands when FasTracks’ extensions come on line. FasTracks includes a short extension of the T-REX line farther south to RidgeGate in Douglas County.

About 25 people gathered Wednesday to hear officials from the Colorado Department of Transportation detail an upcoming project to widen Interstate 225 from East Mississippi Avenue to East 6th Avenue, the Aurora Sentinel reports. CDOT officials laid out maps conceptualizing the roadway for people to see what the finished roadway will look like.